Building a Digital Archive: The Role of Privacy and Content Breadth in ‘Refugees, Relief and Resettlement’

Refugee Children from Occupied Countries

By Bennett Graff, Senior Acquisitions Editor, Gale Primary Sources

Released in 2020, Refugees, Relief, and Resettlement: Forced Migration and World War II is a digital collection of primary sources that documents the largest displacement of people in human history to occur within the near decade-long window that comprised the period just before, during, and shortly after the Second World War.

When Gale creates any of its archives, a good deal of thought goes into its conception and execution. In my role as an editor advocating for an archive devoted to the history of modern refugeeism and forced migration, I had several goals in mind. First and foremost was to shine a historical spotlight on an issue that is very much with us today and will remain with us for decades to come. I discussed the topical nature of the archive in this post. Second was to illustrate the sheer breadth of the topic at hand. The displacement and resettlement of nearly 60 million people extended from South America through Europe, Africa, and Asia to the far reaches of the Pacific Rim. The content included in Refugees, Relief, and Resettlement: Forced Migration and World War II had to represent this reach as broadly as possible. And finally, in laying bear the special historical circumstances of refugees and displaced persons, it was necessary to consider the delicate situation of these often “state-less” individuals by respecting within reasonable means the private information that the publication of any collection of primary sources inevitably brings to the surface.

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Building a Digital Archive: The Role of Relevance and Research Trends in ‘Refugees, Relief and Resettlement’

Migration Maps, primary sources

By Bennett Graff, Senior Acquisitions Editor, Gale Primary Sources

Released in early 2020, Refugees, Relief, and Resettlement: Forced Migration and World War II lets students and scholars explore the largest displacement of people in human history, which occurred in the near decade-long window just before, during, and shortly after the Second World War. When Gale creates any of its archives, a great deal of planning – which can range from two to five or more years – will have gone into its conception and execution. During that period, Gale’s editors weigh a series of factors before the decision to proceed with the project. In this post, we’ll consider two of these factors in relation to Gale’s Refugees archive: contemporary relevance and academic research trends.

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Celebrating VE Day in 1945 and 2020

│By Megan Bowler, Gale Ambassador at the University of Liverpool│

With Remembrance Day events looking a little different in the UK this year, you may recall that we also celebrated the 75th anniversary of VE Day under lockdown. Due to coronavirus restrictions, many of the big celebrations that were planned were postponed. While we wait for large public gatherings and events to become possible once more, I took the opportunity to use archival sources to look back to the first VE Day celebrations, and, using recent news stories from Gale OneFile: News, compare the events of 2020 with those of 1945. Providing access to articles written up to the present day from over 2,300 major world newspapers, Gale OneFile: News will be extremely useful for a study of this kind, whilst Gale Primary Sources offers perspectives from both national and regional newspaper archives.

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From Political Violence to Political Power – Examining Newspaper Reports on Political Violence Around the World

Adolf Hitler, German dictator, ascending the steps at Buckeberg flanked by banner-carrying storm troopers who display the Nazi swastika.

│By Pollie Walker, Gale Ambassador at the University of Liverpool |

Students at the University of Liverpool are able to efficiently and easily research and evaluate primary source documents using Gale Primary Sources. I am studying International Politics and am currently studying a module on political violence. Reaching Gale Primary Sources via the Liverpool University library page, I was able to examine a vast wealth of information on political violence. In this blog post I’m going to explore some instances of political violence around the world, and how the individuals involved sometimes ended up in politically powerful positions. Any student can use the Gale resources available at their institution to undertake research; the use of original, primary source documents is often the key to reaching the highest grades.

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